Demand Drivers Indicate Good Long-term Growth

With 222 million iOS units already sold and 1.1 billion flash-enabled smartphones (a 240 percent growth rate growth over five years) expected to be in use worldwide by 2015, "these staggering numbers are starting to affect the population of the world," SanDisk CTO Yoram Cedar said in his keynote address on Aug. 9.

Apple Computer, the explosion of mobile devices and the rise of social networking teamed up to drive demand for NAND flash data storage through the roof the last couple of years. Solid-state storage analyst IHS iSuppli recently came out with a market report that showed Apple devicesmainly iPhones, iPads, Air notebooks and iPod Toucheswere taking a whopping 30 percent of the world market. What are people using these devices for? All those things one might expect: connecting with friends; sharing email, photos and videos; making business connections; finding a restaurant, ad infinitum. Basically, people are now living large portions of their lives on devices powered by NAND flash, and the industry certainly thanks everybody for that privilege. The sixth annual Flash Memory Summit held in Santa Clara, Calif., Aug. 9-11 created and coordinated by longtime industry analyst Tom Coughlin, brings together NAND flash experts from around the world to discuss the latest news in the sector. Here are some key data points from the first two days of the event. Much of this information was contained in a keynote presentation by SanDisk CTO Yoram Cedar.

Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz